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realized writes: "A man with almost no hair on his body has grown a full head of it after a novel treatment by doctors at Yale University. The patient had previously been diagnosed with both alopecia universalis, a disease that results in loss of all body hair, and plaque psoriasis, a condition characterized by scaly red areas of skin. The only hair on his body was within the psoriasis plaques on his head. He was referred to Yale Dermatology for treatment of the psoriasis. The alopecia universalis had never been treated.

Or "Yet again scientist stare another bucket of evidence that inflammation underlays many human ailments from cancer to heart disease to hair loss and treating the underlying inflammation for one thing is effective in more ways than they expected"

Or "Yet again scientist stare another bucket of evidence that inflammation underlays many human ailments from cancer to heart disease to hair loss and treating the underlying inflammation for one thing is effective in more ways than they expected"

Interesting observation. JAK inhibitors [wikipedia.org] and TNF inhibitors [wikipedia.org] (including monoclonal antibodies [wikipedia.org]), are commonly used to treat various forms of autoimmune diseases such as arthritis (in it's varying manifestations), psoriasis, IBS, ulcerative Colitis and Crohn's. These autoimmune diseases have a high rate of comorbidity and often respond to the same or similar treatments.

Alopecia [wikipedia.org] was already thought to be an autoimmune disorder, so the observed results should not be very surprising. It seems to be only newsworthy since the treatment happened to be a total cure for a very rare disease.

Do you have any idea how much a pill that cures baldness would be worth? After erectile dysfunction that's like the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry, a drug to treat something that's incredibly common especially in middle aged men (in theory when disposable income skyrockets) that's also very embarrassing for a smaller but still large large number of younger people.

That's why it's news. Unfortunately for Pfizer (and the many men, including myself, who are balding) his particular baldness was almost certainly caused by a rare autoimmune disorder (and treated by a drug designed to treat similar disorder) and is therefore unlikely to produce a generalized treatment

"Right. Because they totally don't pay attention to anything else. You know, like how many houses, cars, or basketball teams he owns."

Finding those things out requires conversation... If she says "thanks for the drink, I was just leaving" at the the first sight of your baldness, how will you get to that point? Assuming your idea of casual conversation does not involve screaming "I HAVE N HOUSES!!!" at her back as she walks away, of course...

Do you have any idea how much a pill that cures baldness would be worth? After erectile dysfunction that's like the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry

I think anti-balding would be more popular since it would improve the chances of getting the women to pay attention in the first place.

LOL, Balding says ones testosterone is very high. lots of hair, ones testosterone is very low. I guess it depends upon the woman's desires - neglecting the cars, house, the money used to light the fire place...

Except that this is a ** very rare ** form of baldness. Not your typical male pattern type. Giving the majority of people tumor necrosis factors would 1) improve a number of other chronic diseases (described above) 2) cause quite a bit of excess morbidity (TNFs predispose people to some nasty infections and weird cancers) and 3) run up a very big bill.

Sure. For those with typical male pattern baldness, it's their hair follicles that are sensitive to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). As I understand it, DHT is created when testosterone is metabolized. Cut the nuts off, and there goes the DHT.

Do you have any idea how much a pill that cures baldness would be worth? After erectile dysfunction that's like the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry, a drug to treat something that's incredibly common especially in middle aged men (in theory when disposable income skyrockets) that's also very embarrassing for a smaller but still large large number of younger people.

A drug that treated hair loss in women would probably see even more sales. Women with hair loss are significantly more stigmatized t

This is a positive result, and it could be interesting to know how this works out in the long term. This treatment may not be a permanent cure but may require periodic doses of the medicine in perpetuity. On the other hand, the man's body has clearly changed as a result of the treatment. Some of these changes may resist atrophy if the treatment is stopped. And on the third hand, it is possible that the subject may gradually develop a resistance to the treatment and require ever larger doses until safe l

Yup. This guy has an auto-immune disorder. Pattern baldness is caused by premature death of hair follicles. Treating that would require a way to bring those cells back from the dead or some really nifty tricks with stem cells to replace them.

Not that that's going to stop a deluge of clickbait crap about this over the next few weeks, I'm sure.

(What the article doesn't explain is why a science article needs a title involving an unnecessary metaphor and a colon: "Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Oral Tofacitinib Reverses Alopecia Universalis in a Patient with Plaque Psoriasis.")

About the metaphor, it clarifies what the article is about. Not everyone immediately knows Alopecia Universalis is completely distinct from Plaque Psoriasis--not that most people probably even know anything about either of those.

Good lord. I know some people will find any asnine thing to complain about in the name of the environment, but seriously?
The computer/device you are on to make that post caused large amounts of pollution. Perhaps you should give that up and go live in a cave with nature.

People who had hair and lost it are likely to consume more resources as measured by the effort they put into trying to compensate for it (buying lots of products which don't work, marginal medical therapies, extra car trips in search of remedies, etc) than they would consume just maintaining good hygiene on hair that grew back reliably.

And even people who go bald and don't care often only have partial baldness and would consume styling products anyway, even if they used less of them due to less hair.

Thanks for the serious response. It baffles me that it's now commonplace for people to question the wisdom of e.g. transporting Fiji Water or frozen foods around the world instead of encouraging local production and consumption, but few pause to consider the carbon cost of other consumer items in our modern world.

Lack of head cover can cause skin cancer. Knitting wool hats can increase demand for sheep. Sheep farts are also bad for the environment. I'm not sure if the impact on carbon for premature mortality is offset by the sheep farts.

The drug costs $2055 a month for a 10 mg per day dose. It's a universal anti-lymphocite agent which basically induces a state similar to AIDS, by killing off lymphocytes and leaving the door open for serious infections or diseases, so not exactly safe either.

As TFA states the drug is an arthritis drug and AIDS did actually reduce the arthritis symptoms of Arthritis sufferers who acquired AIDS, was told that by my mothers Rheumatologist. Some Arthritis sufferers have immune systems so "revved up" that they're effectively immune to AIDS. drugs like tofacitinib are basically controllable immune suppression Tofacitinib is basically used for those who can't tolerate the first line immune supressor...methotrexate.

It's a universal anti-lymphocite agent which basically induces a state similar to AIDS, by killing off lymphocytes and leaving the door open for serious infections or diseases, so not exactly safe either.

Alopecia universalis is a rare autoimmune disorder, and it's understandable that a drug that works on a pathway to alleviate arthritis could also work for it. The more common male pattern baldness is caused by the sensitivity of certain hair follicles to androgens, specifically testosterone and its more active form dihydrotestosterone. It's unknown why some hair follicles respond to it by growing hair(think chest hair) and others miniaturize until the hair is nearly invisible(think hairline and top of the head).

The chemical layout of Tofacitinib looks fairly similar to estrogen. We've known for ages that giving MPB-afflicted men estrogen will result in hair regrowth. Unfortunately, it also makes them grow breasts, but that's besides the point.

Throwing my moderations in this disccusion to reply to this - there ought to be a "Wrong" mod option;)
Nope, it's nothing like estrogen. One might as well conclude the structures are related to LSD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
I am an organic chemist currently working in drug design and would conclude these compounds are, from a molecular standpoint, extremely disparate.

Surprisingly enough they found that a patient suffering from a side-effect of an autoimmune disorder treated with a drug for treating an (other) autoimmune disorder was successful in reducing-aka-curing the side-effect.

PLUS ONE for "the scientific method", MINUS ONE THOUSAND for thinking this is in ANY way "totally amazing duude!".

BTW: you CANNOT "cure" baldness, baldness is not a disease, it's a description of a symptom.